like they was mine and I held on to the bedpost for a minute before I shuffled off to the bathroom like I do every morning first thing.
Thinking back on it, I guess I was in shock ’cause I acted like folks who been in a bad accident and ain’t unconscious but might as well be, ’cause they try to keep going like didn’t nothing happen. Once I seen a man act just that way after a motorcycle had hit him … the blood was gushing off his ear and he was laying on the ground wanting to talk about the weather.
I should of been boo-hooing hearing Joy was dead, but instead, I sat on the toilet cool as a cucumber and did my business. It wasn’t till I reached for the toilet paper that I noticed my hand was shaking like somebody with St Vitus Dance.
‘Joy’s dead,’ I heard myself say.
‘Don’t talk ridiculous, fool,’ I answered back. ‘She can’t be dead. Y’all’ll still be driving to Reno this Sunday night, you watch.’
I was really looking forward to spending a couple nights with her in a hotel, like in the old days when her and Brenda and Anndora was out on the road promoting the hit record they had out in 77. Bang Bang Bang they called theyselves.
I heard myself say to Joy like she was standing by me in the toilet, ‘It was gonna be like better days. You and me in a nice hotel with room service and crispy, snow white sheets that I didn’t iron myself. And me running you a hot bubble bath…Did you mess up, Joy? Your Uncle Freddie B’s been laid off work two months, and we can’t afford to have you go messing up on us now. So pull your socks up, child, and stop fooling ’round. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, come on out.’ I was hoping Joy was playing one of them hide and seek games that she was so good at when she was a bitty thing.
‘Come on out, so we can head off to Reno,’ I pleaded, while in my mind, I had a picture of her and her sisters, clear as if I was looking at a television set. They was waiting by the side of a stage in them red sequined dresses with the halter neck, and I was standing by with four face cloths. ’Cause Brenda sweated more than the others, I used to keep two on hand for her and one for Joy and Anndora who was there more for show. They sang the odd do-wops, but Brenda, singing the lead, got the sweatiest, so soon as they finished their stint, I’d hand ’em each a face cloth and rush on stage to collect up any of the big sequins that fell off while they was finger popping and dancing about. Them sequins was too hard to come by and way too expensive to just leave at every venue. So after I’d collected them up, I’d sew ’em back on ’fore the girls had to wear the dresses again. That was part of my job as their wardrobe mistress. But that was more the title their record company give me, so’s the accountants knew what to put by my salary on the girls’ weekly tour accounts. I did a whole lot else, including making sure Anndora and her sex-mad self turned up to the shows at all and seeing that Brenda had enough to eat when and if she wanted, though a diet wouldn’t have hurt her one bit. She always was too big. Not roly-poly fat, but big like a mountain across the girth. Backside as well come to think of it.
Remembering how happy we all was back then is what got my eyes to tearing, and I was grateful when a few measly tears dribbled down my cheeks, ’cause as much as I don’t hold with women crying, especially us colored ’cause we supposed to have more sense, it seemed right to show some emotions, though I wasn’t making no sounds.
Sitting there on the toilet, my throat grew that tight, it nearly gagged me just to swallow. I knew a cream soda would of eased it straight away, but me and Freddie’d drunk the last of them six cans watching tag team wrestling on TV the night before.
But I dragged myself into the kitchen anyway, realizing full well as I headed down the hallway that I wasn’t going to get no cream soda to drink. That was my pretend, but what my mind was actually set on was a kingsize box of Sugar Pops that I kept in a cupboard for Joy. They was left over from her last visit and even though the date on them had expired I didn’t sling ’em in the trash, ’cause as long as I saw them everytime I opened the cupboard, I got the feeling Joy was coming any minute.
She didn’t visit us but twice a year since she moved to New York from LA a few years back, ’cause she said Rex didn’t like California. That was her excuse, but I reckoned that she used to sneak to LA and just not make it up to Frisco to see us. Not that I told her as much. She had her own life to lead and I never did want her to feel like she was obliged to come ’cause she owed me and Freddie B a visit. But still, I knew when she did turn up, she’d be expecting to find Sugar Pops like I always kept in store from when she was little and used to sit up at my table munching on ’em and reading the funny papers.
Even after she got grown and wanted to show off that she’d give up the funnies and didn’t like to read nothing but the New York Times, she still couldn’t pass up Sugar Pops with chocolate milk poured over ’em. She’d say, ‘What you eat is one thing, but what you read is something else,’ and I’d take that as my cue to slip the National Enquirer off the table ’fore she sat down, so I wouldn’t have to sit through her lecturing me about reading rubbish. When the girls was touring, I didn’t never get to read what I liked, ’cause if Joy caught me buying Jet or Drum in them airport lounges, she’d shoot me a look out the corner of her eye like she was the only one grown and I was a child, and I’d put them back.
While I stood there in my kitchen with my bare feet on the cold linoleum floor and tried to believe that Joy was coming like we’d planned, nothing would stop my mind from trailing back and forth over memories, and I caught myself hugging that box of Sugar Pops so tight that I’d crushed it. Both my cheeks was wet with tears, though I still wasn’t crying out loud. Just sniffling like a big baby.
‘Tears ain’t never solved nothing,’ I listened to my better self chastise ’fore I set it straight. ‘Aw, shut up. You think you know everything. I can cry if I want. That child was as good as mine.’
And it was true. So much so that after Joy came along, thirty odd year back, it didn’t never trouble me no more that I couldn’t spawn none of my own.
But my better self was in a ornery mood and said, ‘Don’t shed no crocodile tears in here, and furthermore, you can throw out that old tired box of Sugar Pops ’cause neither you nor Freddie B eats that mess no way.’
I stuffed the box in the trash and headed for the living room with the sound of Tammy’s voice on the phone singing in my head. Joy’s dead…Joy’s dead…Joy’s dead…
With our living room drapes at the cleaners and with nothing but flimsy white nets up to the big picture window, it was shocking bright being that the window’s south facing. The sun had the nerve to shine like it was gonna be a good day and it bounced off the brass planter that Joy’d sent me from Puerto Rico last Mother’s Day and hit the mirror over the mantel. Usually San Francisco mornings is still dull and misty in late March, so I should of been glad it wasn’t miserable and drizzling like it had been for the past week. But I was ready to be mad about anything.
All that buoyed my spirit for half a second was spotting my glasses on the teak dining table that Freddie B will insist on keeping pushed under the window that looks across to the Bay Bridge. I grabbed my ugly bifocals and shoved them on, and soon as I could see good, my head cleared up enough for me to say, ‘Have you lost your mind throwing away that box of cereal when that may be all y’all got to eat ’fore you know what’s hit you. You better fetch that mess out of the trash before God strikes you for being wasteful. And what if it’s a mix-up and Joy ain’t dead?’
That’s how come I still couldn’t bring myself to wake Freddie B with the news. What was the point telling him something that I didn’t believe myself? And anyway, repeating tales can make them real.
I knew what not to think but not what to
